Solid epithelial cancers account for over 10% of all deaths each year world-wide. This figure is expected to increase. Early-stage cancer diagnosis and subsequent complete surgical removal of tumor(s) offers the best chance for complete cancer cure. When early-stage cancer is detected in a patient, minimally invasive techniques may be used to cure the patient. However, to alleviate the need for further treatment (e.g., chemotherapy), a complete resection of the tumor must be made. Non-complete resections require further treatment by re-operation, chemotherapy, or similar. During typical surgical removal procedures of tumors, a surgeon resects a tissue sample comprising a tumor surrounded by a margin to ensure total removal of all cancer cells. Generally, a surgeon desires to limit the volume resected to only slightly more than the volume of the tumor in order to limit the amount of healthy tissue resected. However, resecting with smaller margins increases the likelihood that less than the whole tumor is resected.
After resection, a surgeon must make an intraoperative assessment of whether the resected volume includes the whole tumor. In order to preserve tissue integrity, a surgeon generally has no more than about 30 minutes to make an intraoperative assessment of a tissue resection. Currently, surgeons use visual inspection and palpation to make an intraoperative assessment. In some cases, X-ray, ultrasound, or magnetic resonance imaging are used to provide supplementary qualitative assessments. These imaging modalities provide only approximate (e.g., low resolution) assessments of resection margins. A full pathological assessment of resection margins to determine sufficient and complete removal of a tumor (i.e., with appropriate margins) is only made post operatively. Consequently, a high percentage of resection surgeries result in re-operation to make a second resection.